Finland National Report on Newspaper Representations on Men and Men´s Practices

Hearn, Jeff and Lattu, Emmi
(2001)
Finland National Report on Newspaper Representations on Men and Men´s Practices.
Project Report.
CROME: Critical Research on Men in Europe, Helsinki, Sweden.
(Unpublished)

Abstract

(i) Three papers were surveyed: Helsingin Sanomat (largest circulation national broadsheet), Aamulehti (regional broadsheet with large circulation) and Ilta- Sanomat (largest circulation national tabloid). These newspapers publish many articles on men but this is usually in an apparently agendered or gender-implicit way. There are, for example, many articles on sports, politics and business that are mostly on men, but they do not explicitly discuss gender. There were a small number of articles on men in a gender-explicit way. In some senses a very large proportion of press coverage can be interpreted as being implicitly about men or based on assumptions of how men are or should be.(ii) The alternative methods of measure of coverage are, in different ways, problematic, whether in terms of number of articles, space coverage, ‘weighted’ coverage, proportion of the whole paper, and so on. This needs to be borne in mind in interpreting the results.(iii) The proportionate emphasis on men in spatial terms is by far greatest in the afternoon ‘tabloid’ paper, Ilta-Sanomat, except in terms of social exclusion.(iv) Of the four themes, home and work is relatively strongly represented; this is especially so in terms of proportionate space of coverage, because articles on this theme tend to be longer than on other themes.(v) Social exclusion is a relatively absent theme in a gendered way, even though all the newspapers wrote generally on social exclusion, for example, unemployment without explicitly discussing gender issues.(vi) All three newspapers generally wrote about violence in a supposedly gender-neutral way. The fact that men are far more often the perpetrators, and in some respects the victims, of violence was not discussed in any newspaper. Short reports on violent acts or crimes comprised the majority of the articles related to violence. In all three newspapers, violence is the most widely covered of the four themes examined, in which men are reported in a gender-explicit way. This is especially so in the Ilta-Sanomat, particularly if the large amount of picture coverage is included.(vii) Health issues are not widely reported in Aamulehti and Ilta-Sanomat.